The meta-services Facebook and Instagram have been banned in Russia as “extremist organizations”. The already blocked services in the country fall under the same categorization not only as the radical Islamist Taliban and the IS, but also the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the “Anti-Corruption Society” (FBK) of the regime critic Alexei Navalny. According to the dpa news agency, the messenger WhatsApp, which is also offered by Meta, is not affected. The order applies immediately.
Rule change as a reason
The decision of a court in Moscow goes back to a rule change by the Facebook parent company Meta in the course of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. At the beginning of March, the group announced that it would no longer sanction calls for violence against Russian soldiers in some countries until further notice. Calls like “Death to the Russian invaders” are therefore not blocked now, according to one example. According to media reports, even calls for the killing of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alyaksandr Lukashenka should be allowed temporarily – unless they are too specific. Only calls for violence against Russian civilians are still prohibited.
Russia’s Attorney General immediately submitted an application to have Meta banned altogether. Meta then clarified the rule change and limited it to the attacked Ukraine, among other things. However, this did not prevent the court proceedings. Meta’s requests to drop the allegations, or at least allow more time for an investigation, were denied. In court, the Russian domestic secret service FSB and the media regulator Roskomnadzor, among others, had pleaded for Metas to be classified as “extremist” and for the ban to be reports the news agency Tass. The court followed on Monday.
(mho)
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